A question

We start our day at Jeevan Sahara with worship, prayer and a sharing from the word.

Yesterday we were joined by Rev Santosh George. Santosh lives in Delhi and is married to Atula who helps the SHALOM Delhi HIV care programme recruit churches to look after people with HIV. Santosh was in town to meet with the UBS Interns at JSK and other projects ministering with the poor in the city.

This is a story Santosh shared with us:

A mission hospital in the state of Orissa admitted a destitute woman who was so sick she could not move. All she had with her was a 7 year old boy. The doctors and nurses started looking after the woman - but the son proved to be a hand-full. He would cry and howl. Then stop. Then howl again. Noone could stop the noise. Some of the other patients and nurses threatened the boy. "If you don't stop we will give you an injection" "If you keep crying we will beat you." No effect. The boy kept up his intermittant but persistant howling.

A nurse saw this - and when she went to her quarters for a meal, she gathered some food into a small packet and took it back with her to the hospital.

When she met the boy again, she gave him the packet. He tore it open and wolfed down the food. The mother - who had seen all that was going on, but could not speak or move had tears in her eyes. She knew that the boy had not eaten for 2 days. The nurse did not linger - but went to rejoin her duty.

As she was walking away, she found a small hand on her. She looked down and saw the boy had run after her. He looked up at her and asked her in his Oriya dialect: "are you god?"